I was at IBM from 1978 and I certainly remember the spoof on the "COME FROM" statement.
Some wag inside IBM wrote a fairly convincing treatise which was called "Structured Programming IBM's answer to the GOTO statement". At the time IBM were actively training us in Jackson Structured programming. It was largely a local effort at Northern Road in Cosham. It never made it to the guys at RESPOND. On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 4:06 PM, Joel C. Ewing <jcew...@acm.org> wrote: > One of the issues of ACM SIGPLAN Notices definitively resolved this > issue by suggesting that the any need for the harmful semantics of GOTO > statement could easily be eliminated by instead allowing a "COME FROM" > statement. I can't remember which year, but it was an April issue. :) > JC Ewing > > On 01/17/2018 06:25 PM, Wayne Bickerdike wrote: > > The old goto chestnut drops again. > > > > *Considered harmful* is a part of a phrasal template > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_template> used in the titles of > at > > least 65 critical essays in computer science > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science> and related > disciplines.[1] > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful#cite_note-1> Its use > in > > this context originated in 1968 with Edsger Dijkstra > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra>'s letter "Go To > Statement > > Considered Harmful".'t the originator of "goto considered harmful". > > > > I thought Michael Jackson defused it well it the 1970s with his > structured > > programming book and methods. GOTO was absolutely necessary in many > cases. > > > > I'll posit that most will agree and admit that some won't. > > > > > > > > On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 11:10 PM, David Crayford <dcrayf...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > >> On 17/01/2018 3:19 AM, Paul Gilmartin wrote: > >> > >>> On Tue, 16 Jan 2018 18:51:55 +0000, Seymour J Metz wrote: > >>> > >>> That's a common beginners' mistake. Try putting the label inside a do > >>>> block and see what happens. A proper goto would pop what needs to be > popped > >>>> and no more. See <http://www.rexxla.org/Newsletter/9812safe.html>. > >>>> > >>>> Yes. > >>> There I also read: > >>> Continuation > >>> REXX allows implicit continuation; a statement is treated as > >>> continued if it > >>> would otherwise be syntactically invalid. ... > >>> ??? > >>> Not in any Rexx I know. Is this perhaps a peculiarity of OS/2 Rexx? > >>> > >>> And C has an improper GOTO. It allows branching into a block. It's > >>> implementation > >>> dependent whether initializations are performed then. Ugh! > >>> > >> If you don't like those semantics don't use goto. My ROT is to only use > >> goto for branching to error handlers or cleanup routines. > >> > >> If you look at the Linux kernel code including s390 you will see lots of > >> goto statements used just for that purpose. It's amusing to read threads > >> about what the maintainers think about this subject > >> http://koblents.com/Ches/Links/Month-Mar-2013/20-Using-Goto- > >> in-Linux-Kernel-Code/. > >> > >> > >> > >>> _______________________________________ > >>> > >>>> From: Jack J. Woehr > >>>> Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2018 3:40 PM > >>>> > >>>> On 1/14/2018 11:35 AM, Seymour J Metz wrote: > >>>> > >>>>> REXX doesn't have a goto > >>>>> > >>>> Sure it does: SIGNAL > >>>> > >>> -- gil > >>> > >>> > > > > > > -- > Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- Wayne V. Bickerdike ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
